“Watching Time”

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An island in the rust belt,
once perhaps a wayward
rhinestone jewel and now?

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Some parts have seen
better times and some
have seen bitter times,…

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…some hang around
like the ghosts of a
history of light and dark,…

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…and some don’t see time
at all, but time sees them
and watches…..closely.

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Like a rag or a bag snagged
on a stick in the river, some
parts moving, some standing still,…

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…a city that seems at
times not to know where—
or even when—it is.

 

“Watching Time” poem and images by Johnny Crabcakes at A Prayer Like Gravity

Rebecca here: thank you, thank you to Johnny Crabcakes at A Prayer Like Gravity for these fine photographs and words. Together, they provide a window into the Rust Belt city of St. Louis, always changing, ever still. Please visit A Prayer Like Gravity for much more.

I’ve said before that my lack of talent with a camera has turned out to be a blessing. Wanting to feature regional photography here at Rust Belt Girl, I’ve turned to the experts–like Johnny Crabcakes; along with my fellow Northeast Ohio native, Johnny Joo, who specializes in abandonment photography at architecturalafterlife.com; and Michelle Cole, who posts her thoughts and photography at Intensity Without Mastery and who shared with Rust Belt Girl here and here what her life is like today in Lima, Ohio.

Want more photography? Check out my handy-dandy Categories.

Are you a photographer in a Rust Belt-ish place? I’d love to hear from you!

 

 

“Where are we sending them? Where are they going?” A photo re-blog from A Prayer Like Gravity

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Image from A Prayer Like Gravity

These photos from A Prayer Like Gravity stirred me nearly to tears:

Where are we sending them? Where are they going?

I suppose there’s always been a certain amount of fear around kids at school. There’s the letting go, the separation from family and home. For me, this means a willful disentanglement of my heart from my kids’, as I drop them off at school every day. There’s no drama, no tears–it’s a wonderful school–but I do have to tamp down my mother love, or else I’d never let them go.

Author Elizabeth Stone said:

Making the decision to have a child…is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.

She was right. So my little hearts leave my sight to beat and grow, and I have to remind myself it’s been eight years since we were skin to skin in the hospital at their birth. They are in their own skins now; they don’t need my mother heat like that.

They are strong. I tell myself this when they come home telling me–so nonchalantly–about lock down drills.

I don’t remember lock down drills in elementary school. I remember tornado drills, my knees pressed against the painted cement block walls of the hallway outside our classroom, my body curled like a potato bug, one in a long line of kids, our hands over the napes of our necks. I remember the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster in fifth grade; when I returned home from school my mom was crying while folding laundry in the basement.

I wonder if my kids will associate school with fear or if, instead, they’ll think of my hand taking theirs and squeezing it before they tumble out of the car each morning, looking like mini sherpas with their packs and bags. I hope that’s all the burden they’ll ever have to carry.

Thanks to A Prayer Like Gravity for these photos:

via Where are we sending them? Where are they going?

Blogger Recognition Award (woot woot!)

 

 

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I never win.

Raffles, bingo, coin flips–the universe generally tilts away from me.

So, I was surprised and honored to be nominated by Riya at High Noon Journal earlier this month for the Blogger Recognition Award!

Riya is a fairly new blogger charting the course of her life as a twenty-something. I admire her for detailing her journey as a young woman, currently living in China, far from her native India. Riya talks about her upbringing, what spirituality means to her, how to live a good life, and just what good luck is. With luck, we will be seeing much more from her in the coming year.

For my part, I feel lucky that Riya stumbled upon my blog. Thank you, Riya! Read more